ShoeGuy: Fashion Faux Pas

When a Running Shoe Is No Longer a Running Shoe

Fashion has never been Shoe Guy’s fashion. Heck, I’m lucky if I can find a tee shirt that will look good with jeans when I dress for work each day. Okay, so what if everything goes with jeans—you get my point.

All those news stories on CNN about the fall fashion collection being unveiled by the world’s great designers—you know, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and that bunch—always amuse me. They make such a big deal out of bizarre outfits, never actually worn by regular people, paraded up and down by models with very angry looks on their faces. I always figured that the models were mad because they have to wear that stuff.

Given my admittedly very provincial view of the world of haute couture (Yes, I had to look it up), it probably comes as no great surprise that I have a real problem when running shoes are sucked into that nonsense. It’s insulting enough that functional footwear, charged with such a clear and sacred mission, be treated with such frivolity, but worse, too often the fashion compromises the function.

My lovely wife, Chris, who is also my savvy business partner and quite the ShoeChick, had a fashion versus function crisis with a customer just the other day. A buff young football player from a nearby university came into our store in search of running shoe salvation. It seems that in his quest to get in shape for spring training, he had developed a nasty case of plantar fasciitis, as diagnosed by the team trainers who sent him our way.

Now, when I say he was buff, that doesn’t really do the guy justice. He was easily 200 pounds of 98% lean beef, complete with a fashionably correct ear stud. His body was so ripped, it looked like a 3-D muscle anatomy chart with skin. He turned every female head in the place, but Chris was the first to make a move. (After being married to me for 27 years, she deserves an occasional dose of eye candy.)

She figured out pretty quickly that Quincy Quarterback was in the wrong shoes. Big guy, over-pronator, plantar fasciitis victim and a pair of shoes that, like him, looked great, but unlike him, couldn’t play the game. They were a pricey pair of fashion fluff, built by a brand that should know better.

While Chris was out front on the sidewalk watching the Quince-ster test out a pair of very real, but very glamour-challenged trainers, I examined his oldies. Nice looking to be sure, but totally lacking in athletic substance. Never mind that the midsole contains one of the world’s great cushioning technologies, these pieces of nothing were barely supportive enough to be bedroom slippers.

But you can’t blame our young big-man-on-campus with being drawn into the fashion fray. Unfortunately, all athletic shoe brands fall prey to the allure of fashion, including those with a well-deserved reputation for building great trainers for people who actually run.